April 2009

April 30, 2009

The White House has organised a very energetic and pro-active communications campaign to combat panic over swine flu. For one thing, it is now being rebranded - so that people know it's OK to eat pork - as the H1N1 virus (catchy! Actually catchy is one thing it is, just not in a good way). For another, people are being told that, for the time being at least, life can carry on as normal, as long as you sneeze into your sleeve etc. So far, so calming. But then somebody - somebody - lets Joe the Biden on to the airwaves:

The CDC update came just hours after Vice
President Joe Biden said he advised his family to stay off airplanes
and subways because of the new swine flu, a remark that forced the vice
president's office to backtrack and prompted one airline official to
complain about "fear-mongering."

"I would tell members
of my family — and I have — that I wouldn't go anywhere in confined
places now," Biden said on NBC's TODAY show Thursday.

Attaboy Joe. The girls from The View are NOT HAPPY. Neither, I imagine are quite a few people in the White House.

When Obama appointed Hillary Clinton to be his Secretary of State, I was one of those who predicted it would work. Of course, it's too early to say if I was right. But I'm confident, because Clinton's critics underestimate the extent to which she is driven by an old-fashioned values like a sense of public duty, and loyalty.

I also think she has a firmer grasp over her emotions than her husband, with whom she's often lumped as simply "the Clintons". Yes, she's a ferocious, ruthless competitor. But she doesn't harbour roiling resentments when the fight is over - she gets on with the next job. I believe she really lives by her favourite adage: "bloom where you're planted". Now that her job is to be the president's loyal Secretary of State, she'll focus on doing that to the best of her abilities. And as I said, if she does have presidential ambitions, they are tied to Obama's success.

Exhibit A is this clip of Clinton at a recent congressional hearing. If you want to skip Congressman Pence's long and pompous 'question' then start at 1:30 in. To summarise, Pence asks Clinton why Obama deigned to meet and shake hands with America-hater Hugo Chavez. Bear in mind that during the campaign, Clinton attacked Obama's stated determination to meet with enemies of the United States without preconditions. Perhaps Pence was seeking to prise this difference out. Clinton's eloquent, passionate and rather magnificent reply climaxes at the point when she reminds the Republican - and herself - who won in 2008:

President Obama won the election. He beat me in a primary in which he put forth a different approach.

During the Clinton years there was an ongoing debate amongst his economic team over whether the unequal distribution of the fruits of growth was something the government need worry about, or whether the only important goal was growth itself. In Obama's interview with Leonhardt he makes it clear that his team, which includes alumni of the Clinton administration (one of whom, Larry Summers, was a forceful proponent of the just-grow-the-pie argument) has arrived at a broad consensus: acute inequality is a problem that government must address.

When I first started having a round table of economic advisers... what you discovered was that some of the rifts that
had existed back in the Clinton years had really narrowed drastically... I think that one of the things that we all agree to is that the
touchstone for economic policy is, does it allow the average American
to find good employment and see their incomes rise; that we can’t just
look at things in the aggregate, we do want to grow the pie, but we
want to make sure that prosperity is spread across the spectrum of
regions and occupations and genders and races; and that economic policy
should focus on growing the pie, but it also has to make sure that
everybody has got opportunity in that system.

Alert Plumber Joe!

But seriously... note that the focus is on 'opportunity'. In other words, this can't be fixed via redistributive taxation: the key thing is to increase social mobility, which has gone backwards over the last twenty years.

(The interview is really worth reading in full, by the way. It ranges over the financial crisis, the economy more generally, education and health care, and - without wishing to add to the 100-Day Obama-gush, but there's no avoiding it - Obama displays a phenomenally impressive depth of thought, and clear sense of priorities, at every stage.)

From David Leonhardt's fascinating interview with Obama on economic issues for the NYT:

At the end of our conversation, when I asked him if he was reading
anything good, he said he had become sick enough of briefing books to
begin reading a novel in the evenings — “Netherland,” by Joseph O’Neill.

Mind you, he doesn't say whether he likes it. Which may or may not be a good thing for O'Neill.

April 29, 2009

As I said, I'm not much interested in the 100 day hoopla, but I do like this: Halperin's grades for every senior member of the administration. Two of them get an A+, the little swots. Can you guess which? (Clue: one of them thinks that getting top grades is very cool.)

Jon Huntsman, governor of Utah, a very conservative state, is one of the Republican party's most thoughtful and interesting voices (and it doesn't haven't many of those). Via Ambinder:

Upon learning that Gov. Jon Huntsman, Jr. (R-UT) support civil unions
for gays, the chair of the Kent County, Michigan Republican Party cancelled a
fundraising dinner he was to host, citing the incompatibility of
Huntsman views with the collective views expressed by folks who
participated in the April 15 Tea Party.

There you have it. Not "Come along, feel free to express your views on civil unions, but expect a vigorous debate." Not even "Come along, but please stay away from the subject of civil unions." Instead, it's "You don't think what we think, so we don't want to speak to you." That is the sure sign of a party in self-destruct mode.

Until now, I would have said there are two reasons why she wouldn't. First, she'll be too old (69) in 2016. Second, it's very hard for any party to win a third term in the White House. So either she would lose a general or the party would look to a younger generation to take on the GOP's candidate, whoever that may be.

The depth of the Republicans' plight is still coming into focus. But it increasingly looks like they will still be in bad shape by the time 2016 comes around. If Obama's presidency is seen as successful in eight years time (and I think that's more likely than not, because, although I'm not going to do much on the 100 Day thing because it's such an absurdly arbitrary and premature point to assess a presidency, I do think that whoever you are, left or right, pro or anti, if you don't recognise that we're looking at a once-every-thirty-years political talent, you're fooling yourself) then the Democrats will be able to do what the Republicans did in 1988 and successfully pitch a senior lieutenant of the president as a keeper of the flame.

The age problem remains (ah, we all know about the age problem) and it may be even more of a problem for a woman than for a man. Still, she will be younger than McCain was in 2008. He lost, of course, and his age didn't help, but I don't think it was one of the main reasons for his defeat.

There are a dozen reasons why President Hillary might not come to pass, and I still rate the prospect unlikely. But there's already a movement amongst some of her supporters to push for a 2016 candidacy, and you can bet that if there's even a smidgen of a chance, she and Bill will go for it.

One more thing: if this really is plausible, then it makes Obama's pick of Clinton to be Secretary of State look very far-sighted. Her hopes are bound to his success.

I think the Republicans be might out of power for an unprecedentedly long time.

As I said yesterday, the party is stuck in the familiar pattern of parties who suffer bruising, epochal defeats at the polls. The moderates ship out, and the extremists, full of passionate intensity, take over. The party retreats into its own bubble, where ideology becomes the only reality, and it's the voters who have, inexplicably, lost the plot (or not so inexplicably - it's all the media's fault!).

What happens next? The party moves further away from the political mainstream, and loses election after election, until even the extremists lose heart, reality forces its way back in, the moderates regroup and reform, and the party adapts to the new political landscape. This is how it will go with the Republicans, and the only question worth asking is, how long will it take to play out? I was already pretty certain they'd lose in 2012, but I now think they'll lose in 2016 and probably 2020 too. I wouldn't be rushing to put a bet on the GOP in 2024 either. I think their predicament might be worse than history suggests.

The reason I say this is the way that the structure of America's public realm has changed over the last twenty years. The growth of cable TV at the expense of the networks, the emergence of the internet, and the rise of the talk show radio hosts: all these combine to create a media environment in which it's more possible than ever before to only hear from voices that reinforce your own prejudices. Add this to the polarisation of neighbourhoods identified by Bill Bishop and you can see that it will be very easy for the GOP's ideologically-inclined supporters to remain inside their bubble, safe from the doubts and uncertainties of the real world, for years or even decades to come. After all, every time they get online or turn on the TV, they hear Red State or Glenn Beck telling them that socialism or fascism has arrived and they're the last line of defence.

Of course, relatively few people are completely impervious to different views and voices: reality will seep back in eventually, the party will move on and adapt to the new environment. I just suspect it's going to take longer than it has done in the past.

April 28, 2009

The Republican Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania has announced he's jumping ship to to the Democrats. This is big news because it gets the Democrats closer to that filibuster-proof 60 seat majority (if/when Al Franken is seated, it's game over). Rahm will be bouncing off the walls. And it's Day 100 tomorow!

Specter is moving to save his political life. If he hadn't done this he'd have faced a bruising primary in his own party and then a probable defeat to the Democrats in the 2010 election. His state, Pennsylvania, has seen an increase in the number of registered Democrats (thanks, in part, to the titanic Clinton-Obama primary there) and a decline in the number of Republicans. The ones who have stuck with the Republicans tend to be the hardcore conservatives, who aren't impressed by Specter's moderation. So Specter is getting out while he can, thus leaving the GOP even more extreme (and one senator smaller) than it was.

There, in a nutshell, you have the reason that the Republican party is so screwed. To observers of the Labour Party in the early 1980s or the Tory Party after Thatcher, this is a familiar story. The moderates leave, so the extremists become more dominant, which forces out more moderates, which leaves the ship drifting ever further from the political mainland...

(Ps this is, amongst other things, a small triumph for Joe the Biden, friend of Specter and wily old dog of the Senate.)

Sojourner Truth (surely one of the all-time greatest names; she gave it to herself) was born into slavery in 1797. In 1826 she escaped to freedom, and later became a prominent abolitionist, meeting Abraham Lincoln, and campaigning for women's right to vote. Today she becomes the first black woman to be honoured with a bust at the Capitol, in a ceremony attended by Michelle Obama. Here's a passage from her most famous speech:

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages,
and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere.
Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives
me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my
arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and
no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much
and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the
lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children,
and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with
my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?

No, not Joe. Brooks. As I've said before, the relationship between Obama and David Brooks forms its own little sub-plot to this presidency. Last night, at an awards ceremony, Obama's top man David Axelrod made the love explicit. As Ben Smith suggests, it's sort of embarrassing for a columnist to be praised in such fulsome terms by the powers-that-be. No doubt Brooks will receive lots of shiny apples in the post tomorrow. Axelrod, a former journalist, knows this but went ahead anyway. And why not?

David (Brooks) has a well-developed point of view about the responsibilities of
government and its limits. He’s spent a great deal of time thinking and
writing about it. He has an abiding faith in the power of the
individual and the power of markets, and he’s deeply skeptical about
the role of the state. He calls on us to test old assumptions and
challenge old ways. And this is good. This is essential.

Now I must confess that there are days, sitting in the White House,
when I wish I could trade places with David and the scribes in
editorial suites and academic centers who are always generous with
their advice. I think about what we could do if only the President were
king and we lived in a perfect world, where rational thought always
reigned and the messy business of politics and the art of the possible
never intruded. Of course, in the real world, governing rarely offers
that luxury. Democracy is never quite that easy. There are times when I
read columns—not David’s, of course—that remind me of what someone once
said of Burke: ‘I wish I could be as sure of anything as he is of
everything.’

But what I appreciate about David is that he also is willing to
challenge his own assumptions, and acknowledge the possibility of
other, plausible theories. I appreciate the elegance and civility with
which he writes, a quality the man I work for particularly values – a
quality too often missing in our public discourse today. … There isn’t
anyone, including me, who reads David’s columns and can’t see that he
thinks deeply about the challenges facing our country, our society, and
our world – and that he explores those challenges with great
intellectual rigor.

Agreed. The quality he identifies in that last paragraph, about the ability to take a walk around one's own assumptions, is particularly valuable, and it's one I believe Brooks shares with Obama. Another reason to esteem Brooks is that nearly every column is grounded in some new data: an academic paper he's read, a set of statistics, a trip he's been on, conversations with experts, etc. He brings news, and then he makes sense of it. Too many op-ed columnists think it's enough to just spout.

Michelle Cottle of the New Republic has written a vivid sketch of vice-president Biden after spending some time with him on the job:

At one point, the conversation turned to dogs. The veep loves
'em--especially the big breeds--and he is clearly enamored of his
six-month-old German Shepherd, Champ, with whom he faithfully rises at
6 a.m. each day for a morning constitutional. Envisioning Champ and his
master gamboling across the grounds of the Naval Observatory, one is
struck by how much Biden himself resembles an overgrown pup: friendly,
open, enthusiastic, a shade uncontrollable, and so damn happy.

Which reminded me of this passage from Alex Massie's very funny take on Biden, from last year:

Despite all those years in Washington, there's an endearing child-like
quality to Biden. Or, to put it another way, observing Biden in full
flow is a glorious sight; it's like watching a labrador bound after a
bouncing ball even though, being a puppy, it doesn't quite have the
co-ordination to grab the ball cleanly. Instead there's a frenzy of
yelping delight as the ball carroms around the yard, always
tantalisingly just out of reach...

Even before McCain took office, his selection of his personal
vice-presidential favorite Tom Ridge (vetoed as a running mate because
he failed the anti-abortion litmus test) as White House chief of staff
circumscribed Palin's orbit. An authoritative late March story in the
conservative Washington Times
quoted "sources close to the vice president" complaining that Palin
felt marginalized by the "macho culture" of the White House.
Coincidentally, McCain was overheard by reporters two days later in an
open-mike snafu saying about Palin, "Shouldn't she be off at a funeral
somewhere far away?"

In his first NYT column, Ross Douthat does something not entirely dissimilar and imagines what would have happened if Dick Cheney had discovered his hunger for publicity a year or so ago and actually run for president:

As a candidate, Cheney would have doubtless been as disciplined and
ideologically consistent as McCain was feckless. In debates with Barack
Obama, he would have been as cuttingly effective as he was in his
encounters with Joe Lieberman and John Edwards in 2000 and 2004
respectively. And when he went down to a landslide loss, the
conservative movement might – might! – have been jolted into the kind
of rethinking that’s necessary if it hopes to regain power.

Nah. They'd have blamed the media and turned up the radio.

I agree with Douthat's main point, though: America's debate about the methods used during the war on terror would have been better aired during the election (but McCain was anti-torture anyway and Obama saw no profit in taking it up as a theme). A Cheney candidacy would have played a genuinely useful role in that regard. Still, better late than never: I think Cheney's loud defence of his administration's tactics is a good thing, because it does force these issues out into the light. The convention that presidents or vice-presidents don't criticise their successors is mere etiquette and shouldn't get in the way of this.

April 27, 2009

This really is the most extraordinary cock-up. The Pentagon takes Air Force One for an unannounced zip around downtown New York, scaring the hell out of New Yorkers. People run screaming out of buildings, and even the markets take a dip. All for a 'photo opportunity'. The mayor is on the war path. Bloomy versus Gates? Tough call.

In Jersey City, construction workers were evacuated from a condominium tower under construction at 77 Hudson Street.

The workers, who were on the 32nd floor of the construction site,
said the plane circled three times past the Goldman Sachs tower, the
tallest building in New Jersey. On the second pass, they said, the jet
appeared to be only a few dozen feet from the building — close enough
to clip the side of the skyscraper. A fighter followed right behind,
mirroring its moves.

The construction site as were other buildings in downtown Jersey
City, including offices in the Exchange Place financial complex.

Carlina Rivera, 25, who works at an educational services company on
the 22nd floor of 1 Liberty Plaza, said her co-workers were spooked in
part because their offices are so close to the site of the 9/11 attack.
“As soon as someone saw how close it got to the buildings, people
literally ran out,” she said. “Probably about 80 percent of my office
left within two minutes of seeing how close it got to our building.”

(Senate Majority Leader Harry) Reid writes of being impressed with Obama when the
then-freshman delivered a speech about then-President George W. Bush's
war policy."''That speech was phenomenal, Barack,' I told him,''
Reid writes. "And I will never forget his response. Without the barest
hint of braggadocio or conceit, and with what I would describe as deep
humility, he said quietly: 'I have a gift, Harry."'

Since I read this I have been practicing ways to say "I have a gift" without even hinting at conceit. It's really hard.